


Orshan’s Kiss

by Island_of_Reil



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Blow Jobs, Coming Untouched, Crying, Desecration of a Holy Place, Internalized Homophobia, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Meditation, Nonconathon Treat, Post-Canon, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sex Pollen, Shame, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 16:03:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11294037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: Thara agrees to meditate with his young emperor, who stirs shameful and forbidden desires in him, while both of them are under the influence of a sacred herb. But the sachet of burning herbs does not have a calming, spiritually beneficial effect on them. Quite the opposite…





	Orshan’s Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vulnerasti_Cor_Meum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulnerasti_Cor_Meum/gifts).



“Could we please have a sachet of Cstheio’s Breath?” Thara asked the curate standing behind the counter where such items were stored.

The curate, middle-aged and implacable, did not speak in reply but merely took down a jar from one of the shelves behind him. It was filled with small linen mesh sachets, each perhaps two inches square and stuffed with fragrant dried herbs. He took one out and passed it wordlessly to Thara.

“Thank you,” Thara said. The curate nodded once, curtly.

“Did he take a vow of silence?” Edrehasivar murmured as they and his First Nohecharei walked out of earshot, toward the stairwell.

“We do not think so, Serenity. He is simply not very talkative.”

Clerics at the Othasmeire of Uvezho were not very talkative overall. Within the prelacy, this house of worship was known for its focus on meditation and mysticism. Thara did not serve there; he Witnessed vel ama for the surrounding marshes, the numerous local tributaries between the Athamara and the Cethora, and their associated flora and fauna, working hand in hand with the Witnesses who spoke for each river. But thanks to his continued sanctification, he enjoyed privileges at the othasmeire, which was not far from the tiny cottage provided for his lodgings. And, in sooth, he had chosen his current post in part because this othasmeire was as quiet and peaceful as the marshlands around it.

As they walked down the staircase, he and Edrehasivar too ceased to speak. The First Nohecharei preceded them, lest His Serenity fall, and the soles of their boots rang out against the stone. Thara and Edrehasivar padded more softly along in their plain woven sandals.

Uvezho’s was an ancient othasmeire of echoing stone, soaring towers, and many hidden spaces. Most of the last lay two floors below ground, their walls solidly built to withstand the perennial spring floods. Without windows, without vents into other rooms, their doors snugly fitted into their frames, the chambers were as cool and silent as the tombs they resembled — excellent places for novices to begin learning how to shut out the tumult of the world.

In the letter that Thara had received two weeks before, Edrehasivar had inquired politely how he fared in his new role, and whether the emperor might visit him at Uvezho. In addition, Edrehasivar wrote, he wondered whether they could meditate together with the use of sacred herbs, specifically Cstheio’s Breath. He had learned of the herb in a conversation with the Archprelate, and he was keenly curious to experience its effects and, perhaps, thereby attain deeper union with his patron goddess.

The letter had left Thara caught between eager anticipation and a certain dread. Eager anticipation, because it did him undeserved honor that the man who had given him new purpose in life would wish to meditate by his side. Dread, because the same man stirred thoughts in Thara that were aught but spiritual.

He himself had never partaken of Cstheio’s Breath before, though he had heard and read of the miracles it wrought in the mind and the spirit. Would it wear away not only the barriers of understanding that stood between man and god, but the inhibitions and social strictures that stood between subject and emperor? To assuage his worries, Thara had devoted hours to reading through the literature on Cstheio’s Breath, both spiritual and medical, in the othasmeire’s small library. No scholar nor cleric had ever reported the effects Thara feared. But, he knew, that was no guarantee: almost all the reports were of solitary meditators.

It did not help that, at Uvezho, those who used the meditation chambers were asked to change into very simple clothing, and relatively little of it. All of His Serenity’s stunning jewelry had been locked into a safe, his face had been scrubbed clean of paints and powders, and his long fingernails had been divested of their lacquer. He had then exchanged his many layers of silks and velvets and his costly leather shoes for no more than a loose-fitting belted robe of undyed linen, a matching ribbon for his hair, and the sandals.

Thara had merely changed out of the homespun and plain boots that were his usual attire nowadays. Though his robe was shorter than the emperor’s, it hung lower on his body than Edrehasivar’s did on his. The emperor’s calves, which seemed more muscular than once they had been, were dark against the pallor of his robe and that of the stone all about. They were very, very smooth, Thara noticed. He wondered if this were natural, or if the edocharei shaved them. And what else the edocharei might have shaven…

He bit the inside of his cheek and set his ears. He was a fortunate man to have rebounded from utter disgrace, become a hero of the Ethuveraz, and obtained a position that made him far happier than his erstwhile benefice had. And it was all thanks to Edrehasivar. He should not be entertaining lewd thoughts of this good-hearted young man, and especially not in the sacred heart of an othasmeire.

On the lowest floor, rushlight wavered dimly upon stones that had been laid down in antiquity. The upper floors had been fitted with gaslights in recent decades, but the Prelate of Uvezho had declined to have fixtures installed on the lowest floors, as bright light was not conducive to contemplation. Thara stopped beside the door of one of the dozen chambers, took down the candle from the doorside sconce, and touched the wick to a nearby rushlight.

He then turned to the nohecharei. “Lieutenant Beshelar, Cala Athmaza, we strongly suggest you wait outside the meditation chamber. The effect of Cstheio’s Breath would impair your ability to protect His Serenity. We will close the door behind us, which will seal the fumes of the herb within the chamber.” Both men nodded, stationing themselves on either side of the door. Beshelar did not look even mildly put out. Evidently Edrehasivar had explained the nature of this practice to them beforehand.

The chamber’s door was a two-inch-thick slab of age-dark oak bound in iron and with iron pulls. Once he and Edrehasivar had both entered, Thara tried to pull it shut quietly behind them, but it settled into its frame with a reverberating thud. His ears rang in the silence that followed.

Each of the chambers was roughly twenty square feet in size. In this chamber, one wall was mostly taken up by a bas-relief of Ulis rendered in black marble. Below the sculpture was a long, narrow stone that almost spanned the wall; it served as a shelf upon which to rest one’s folded hands as one knelt in contemplation of the god. Upon one end of this stone were a corked jug of water and a small bowl with a linen towel folded beneath them, for those who embraced the tradition of washing their hands and faces before meditating. The only other items in the room were the great brazier for burning herbs, a wall sconce for the candle, and a scattering of Anverneise prayer rugs.

Thara’s hands shook minutely on the candle. He was alone with His Serenity. The nohecharei were on the other side of the heavy door, quite likely unable to hear their voices. And only the thinnest of robes separated Edrehasivar’s naked flesh from Thara’s…

Ruthlessly he wrested back control of his mental faculties from his imagination. Then he walked to the brazier, uncovered it, lay the sachet among the coals, and lit them with the candle flame.

Edrehasivar was peering around the room. “Mer Celehar… should we seat ourself on a rug?”

“Please do, Serenity,” Thara said, setting the candle into the sconce. “It will take a few minutes for the sacred herbs to begin to smolder and to affect us” — he used the plural here — “but you may begin meditating whenever you wish.”

The emperor nodded, then sank down elegantly onto one of the rugs and removed his sandals. He sat in the classic Barizheise pose of meditation, knees bowed outward and hands clasped between them. He closed his eyes, and under his breath he began to murmur a mantra.

He looked, Thara thought, like a statue he had seen in the Ulimeire of Sevezho. Many goblins toiled in that factory town, and quite a few served in the ulimeire as well. To welcome those clerics and congregants alike, the statues of the gods that stood in that ulimeire included some carved from basalt in the Barizheise style. His Serenity had not the distinct goblin features rendered in the Sevezheise statue of Ulis, but the flames in the brazier danced off his skin much as those of the votive candles had off the surface of the statue. And, in sooth, his skin looked no less smooth, though it would be considerably warmer to the touch…

_Degenerate. Hast brought thine emperor here only to ogle him?_

His face hot with shame, Thara set his ears again and dropped his eyes to the floor, making himself focus on the dimly illuminated patterns of the prayer rugs. He chose the one nearest to His Serenity and settled himself down upon it in the same posture, placing his own sandals off to one side.

He was glad, he thought, of his training. Meditation was the earliest lesson taught to novices, and it had seen Thara through much turmoil. Not his worst turmoil, to be sure; he had briefly abandoned the practice in Aveio along with robes, mask, and queue, thinking himself no longer worthy of communion with Ulis. But, after the Archprelate had resanctified him, he had slowly fallen back into it, which allowed him to bear up through Csoru Zhasanai’s sufferance of him and through the dangerous game he had played in Amalo. As a Witness vel ama, he meditated upon awakening each day, that naught would obscure for him the voices of the waterways and of the life they sustained.

Now, he let his mind slip past rational thought, as if into the inner chambers of a whelk. The awareness of His Serenity remained at the edge of his consciousness, warm and inviting, but half a lifetime’s habits prevailed. Before long there came the blessed sense that time itself was dissolving, that he existed outside of it entirely. His brain ceased its endless chatter, and his ardor — thank all the gods — seemed to cool.

The face of Ulis began to loom in the eye of Thara’s mind. A god of hidden messages and ambiguity was Ulis, no less than the Dreaming Lady of the Stars with whom he shared the night sky. His eyes were cold, his expression stern, but he held his open hands out before him. All would come to him in the end, and he could turn none away, but few wished to enter his realm before their destined times. Thara focused on those welcoming hands, basalt-dark; slipped his own hands into them, marveled at their warmth…

Even in the cocoon that meditation spun about the mind, that warmth struck him wrong. With a silent plea for Ulis’s forgiveness he withdrew his hands from the god’s. But his own hands did not cool. They throbbed with a heat that, he realized, was alight all over his skin.

He was suddenly cast out of the cocoon, out of the whelk. He opened his eyes onto the flickering light of brazier and candle, playing sensually in the hooded eyes and the parted lips of the sculpted god. The herb was thick on the air now, heavy in Thara’s lungs, in his blood, like the glass of dear-bought Soluneise wine that Evru had held to his lips one night before they had begun to kiss… 

_What —_

In the novitiate, one not only learned how to shut off one’s mind, but one sharpened it with rhetoric, debate, and the challenges of ministry. Thara scrabbled now for those tools, for the waking awareness he had come here to set aside. It was like trying to ascend a smooth cliff face down which oil had been poured. The harder he tried, the more his senses distracted him. His ears felt strangely … _awake,_ as if straining for the sucking mouth and teasing tongue of a lover. But the heat seemed oddly concentrated in his nipples, which sparked with a sensation halfway between soreness and pleasure as they brushed against the somewhat coarse fabric of the robe. The prayer rug, woven of soft fibers and softened even more with use, made him feel as though every part of him it touched were made of glass being rubbed with a silken cloth.

_His Serenity._

Thara had enough sense left to realize that he should not look upon the emperor, not while the herb was effecting these unexpected sensations in him.

Ulis curse him, he could not refrain from looking.

Edrehasivar’s head was tilted back, his lips parted, his eyes closed, his ears relaxed but twitching steadily. Despite the consistent coolness of these chambers that the brazier did not truly touch, his dark-grey skin glowed with a fine sheen of perspiration. Beneath the robe his slender chest rose and fell rapidly. Further down, barely hidden by the shadows and the bows of the emperor’s folded legs, Thara could perceive a tenting in the linen. The realization robbed his breath from him.

_This is wrong. This is all wrong._

There was one last slender reed between himself and further, irrevocable disgrace: he could remain silent, pretend to meditate, if he could not actually withdraw back into himself. But … what if that were not Cstheio’s Breath in the brazier? What if the novices who picked the sacred herbs for the othasmeire had mistaken a deadly plant for the herb of contemplation? What if, as they stood in Ulis’s antechamber, Edrehasivar turned to Thara and demanded, _Why didst not summon my nohecharei, that they could save us both from the fumes?_ And, bound to speak only truth in that antechamber, Thara would have to admit: _I esteemed my reputation above our safety._

He swallowed, then murmured, “Serenity?”

Edrehasivar opened his eyes. They were shockingly dark, pupils wide within a thin ring of Drazhadeise grey. Thara bit his lower lip to suppress an untoward sound.

“Mer Celehar,” the emperor said, his voice tremulous. “We have become … quite warm, and we can barely catch our breath though we have been sitting still and meditating. Is … is this the usual effect of the herb?”

 _Ulis… art testing my resolve?_ Thara thought frantically. Surely, Ulis was: the god wanted confirmation that Thara was not so debased he would seek to engage in perverted acts with his Zhas — a child in comparison with himself, not yet wed so perhaps a virgin still — in an othasmeire, no less, and before the god’s image. He cleared his throat, but his voice was even more graveled than usual. His throat felt so dry. “We … we do not know, Serenity. We have never before used Cstheio’s Breath ourself. We … we had not read of any such effects.”

He had no sooner fallen silent than the blood rushed fiercely through him anew, and most fiercely into his loins. He could barely keep himself from swooning, keep himself sitting erect … as erect as his cock now was … but he gave in to the urge to close his eyes. If he could not see His Serenity, helplessly caught up in the same powerful and unnatural arousal that had ensnared Thara, perhaps he could last through the allotted meditation time with his honor intact.

It was of little use. His mind projected shamefully salacious images onto the insides of his eyelids: him servicing the emperor, or, worse, the emperor servicing him, in every way known to man. He bit his lip until he tasted copper on his tongue. Ulis was demanding he prove himself worthy of his calling, and no sanctified cleric could deny a god’s demand.

Then he felt searing-hot hands on his bare forearms. He uttered a small cry of confusion, excitement, and terror as he felt himself being dragged into the lap of the emperor. Edrehasivar radiated heat through his thin robe as though he were Anmura, and his cock through the linen was as hard as a stone and as hot as a brand against Thara’s arse.

“Serenity—” Thara choked on whatever words might have followed.

“Forgive us, Mer Celehar, but … we cannot resist,” Edrehasivar breathed. “We fear we will die an we do not touch you.”

Thara threw back his head and groaned. _Ulis, what wouldst have me do? I cannot refuse my Zhas!_ Then he groaned again as the emperor’s scalding hands stroked his face, his blood raging through him in response. When Edrehasivar’s thumb brushed again his lips, he shuddered as hard as if it had brushed against his cockhead. Without his will, his tongue slipped out to caress it, to suck it into his mouth, and Edrehasivar moaned and tugged Thara’s head about to face him.

He was, indeed, almost certainly a virgin. His tongue lay passive, though he pressed his lips to Thara’s over and over, as if he had never heard that one could ply one’s tongue in kissing. Thara, unable to do aught else, slid his own tongue into the emperor’s mouth, which elicited a stifled but desperate sound. After a moment he felt Edrehasivar’s tongue rise to meet his own, tentatively, but the emperor’s long fingernails had begun to dig painfully into the flesh of Thara’s arms.

When they broke the kiss for breath — heavy, drugged, lust-inducing breath — Edrehasivar did not speak, only whimpered. Thara could not remember having grown so hard ever before from merely a kiss. Or in all his life. The linen of his robe rubbed wetly against his cockhead, having begun to soak up his early seed, and it was a torture and a pleasure and, oh, gods, he wanted the emperor’s warm and eager hands on it… 

But Edrehasivar’s hands had gone to the back of Thara’s head. In his disorientation it took Thara a moment to realize the emperor meant to undo his queue. His hands were uncertain, likely not only from lust but because he had never braided his own hair before. “Serenity… let us,” Thara whispered, sliding his own hands behind his head. Edrehasivar acquiesced, resuming his caresses of Thara’s face, as Thara deftly undid the ribbon and separated the strands.

His hair had grown only just past his shoulders since his time in Amalo, but the emperor’s fingers were reverent in the spill of it, stroking and smoothing, their heated tips striking sparks against Thara’s scalp wherever they brushed it. “So soft,” Edrehasivar whispered, “so bright.” Thara could feel him throb against his buttocks. He tilted his head back into the touches, closing his eyes again, and as the emperor stroked the inner surfaces of his ears he uttered a needy whine.

With his eyes tightly shut he was unprepared for the slide of Edrehasivar’s hands down the sides of his body. He gasped and grunted at the heat soaking into his skin through the thin robe, feeling his hips begin to rock without warning as the emperor’s hands dropped to encompass his thighs —

His hips bucked a final time, hard, and he made an indescribable noise. The climax was brief but it left him dazed and panting in Edrehasivar’s arms.

It took him long, long seconds to realize that it had left him still hard as well.

“M-mer Celehar?” The emperor’s voice was high and shaking, and his cockstand surged insistently against Thara’s bottom.

Thara groaned quietly. He floated on no sweet, soft cloud of release; he seemed to need relief again, no less urgently than before he had soiled his robe with his seed. Dizzily he wondered if Edrehasivar, too, had spent but grown hard again at once. “Are…” he began hesitantly. “Did you….”

The emperor shook his head wildly; in the heat he generated, his curls had begun to escape his queue, and they bounced with the movement of his head. “No,” he whispered brokenly. “I… we…” He broke off, and in the half-light Thara recognized all too well the mix of shame and need that flickered across the elegant Drazhadeise features.

“Serenity,” he said softly. “Let … let me service you.”

Edrehasivar blinked. “You …” Thara could not tell if he trailed off in shame or confusion.

Thara gently eased himself off the emperor’s lap and rose. His robe was sticky against his groin, but he cared not at all as he reached down for Edrehasivar’s hand; the emperor obediently clasped Thara’s hand and stood. _I am damned for this, an I were not already,_ Thara thought as he led Edrehasivar to the stone before the altar. _But this would be no less a sacrilege if committed upon the carpets._

With shaking hands he undid the belt of Edrehasivar’s robe. The emperor’s cock sprang forth, blood darkening it to indigo, its head glistening in the firelight. Behind it, his stones were drawn tight against his body. Thara’s mouth watered. “Please, Serenity,” he said thickly. “Be seated.”

The emperor licked his lips. “Is … is it not….”

“It will be most comfortable for you,” Thara said, avoiding the question. Edrehasivar, he knew, was astute enough to recognize that avoidance. But perhaps the herb had occluded it from his powers of observation — or perhaps he did not truly want the answer — for he sank down upon the stone as bidden.

Thara dropped to his knees, not caring that no carpet softened the stone beneath them. He welcomed its roughness as he took the straining cock before him into his mouth, into his throat, barely pausing to breathe or to adjust to its width. The emperor muffled a cry behind his hand, shuddering hard, and with his other hand he gripped the stone beneath him tightly.

To have Edrehasivar in his mouth was all-consuming for Thara: the weight upon his tongue, the stretch of his cheeks, the soft musk rising through the scents of soap and perfume, the slipperiness of the copiously flowing early seed and its intoxicatingly bitter taste. He steadied Edrehasivar’s cock with one hand around its base, and with the other he gently cupped and stroked the emperor’s smooth-shaven stones. From time to time he released them that he could slip his hand under his own robe and rub at his heavily hanging cock. But he did not stroke himself leisurely, as he was driven less by his own need than by his desire to relieve Edrehasivar’s as quickly as he could. He therefore did not ply his tongue cleverly and teasingly but swallowed and sucked and moved his head without cease. The emperor took the tips of Thara’s ears into his hands, stroking and tugging gently, and the maddening touch elicited stifled moans from Thara that, he knew, must have vibrated around Edrehasivar’s shaft.

Before long he could feel the emperor straining, trying with all his might not to thrust savagely into Thara’s mouth as a man might do to a whore. Thara sucked and bobbed all the harder as he looked up, above Edrehasivar’s head, into stone eyes that had resumed their habitual chill. _Use me, Serenity. I will take your seed. I_ am _a whore, as my god well knows._ Though he could not goad the emperor into fucking his face, it was only a moment more before Edrehasivar groaned and flooded Thara’s mouth with seed.

The emperor leaned back panting, as Thara had, with his eyes closed. His robe swung fully open. Thara, savoring the spend in his mouth, took the opportunity to study the dark sweat-sheened flesh that Edrehasivar bared to him. His nipples were stone-hard, his flat belly quivered … and his cock, gleaming with Thara’s spit, was not shrinking in the aftermath of his crisis. Not at all.

As the black eyelashes began to flutter against the dark, high-arched cheekbones, Thara hastily swallowed, then whispered, “Serenity?”

The emperor’s eyes opened, as dark as before. His legs were trembling. “Please,” he whispered. “Please, Mer Celehar. _Help me.”_

The words engendered terror in Thara, though they did not diminish his cockstand one bit. “Serenity…” he began helplessly.

Edrehasivar shook his curls wildly; his eyes were no less wild. “Not ‘Serenity.’”

Thara’s heart stopped for a long beat. “I — I cannot…” he stammered.

The emperor, to Thara’s even greater horror, slid from the stone down upon his own knees. His cock swayed obscenely with the movement, as though it were a malevolent spirit that had fastened itself onto him to torment him. “Mer Celehar —Thara — _please!”_ His voice was cracking.

Somewhere beneath the fog of the Cstheio’s Breath, the gears of Thara’s rational mind still turned; he knew that once their mutual lust was spent _(gods above,_ would _it ever be spent?)_ , it would be self-loathing’s turn to consume him. But how could he ignore the plea of his emperor? How could he abandon Edrehasivar to the cruelty of the herb, shame him before his own nohecharei? Not to mention any other cleric who happened to see him — who may not have taken vows of silence and who would not be oathbound to the emperor?

His hands trembled as hard as his voice. “An … an wilt lie supine on a carpet, I — I will… take thee within me.”

Merciful goddesses, from the look on Edrehasivar’s face Thara was surprised he did not issue yet another jet of seed on the spot. He merely nodded, then shifted himself to a nearby carpet and lay upon it on his back with his feet and knees drawn up slightly, arms thrown outward in surrender, pale robe spread out around him like a nimbus. The way his lips parted and his eyes flickered spoke of nervousness as well as lust. Thara guessed he had never imagined himself losing his virginity to a marnis former prelate in a sanctified space. But the rigidity of Edrehasivar’s cockstand evinced no ambivalence whatsoever.

Thara pulled his own belt loose and let the robe drop where it would, sighing in relief to be free of its tortuous confines. Still his flesh burned under Edrehasivar’s gaze. Silently he thanked Ulis that his endless walks through the marshes, and plain but plentiful table fare, allowed him to cut a far less pathetic figure than when first he’d met the emperor.

“Art — wilt —” It was not easy to tell in this light, but Edrehasivar’s face seemed to have darkened.

“Shhh…just let me…” Thara murmured. He had been utterly unprepared for the wave of tenderness now breaking over him. Edrehasivar, for all his power and determination, was so very young, so untried in physical love. If they could not extricate themselves from this indignity, Thara could, at the very least, minister to the young emperor’s body with the gentle reverence it deserved.

He could feel the blood surging in his own face as he straddled Edrehasivar’s acquiescent form. The emperor’s eyes were adoring, awed. _I do not deserve thy fond regard,_ Thara thought as, his own cock abject in its visible need, he reached beneath himself to guide his sovereign inside him.

The broad head breached him, and he gritted his teeth. He had not received another man in a long time, not since … Evru. But he could feel memories surface in his flesh: the sweet apprehension of being slowly forced open, the deeper and deeper push until his lover was fully seated within him or his fingers completely enveloped within Thara. It was Thara himself, now, who drove another man’s flesh into him to the hilt. But he remembered how and when to push, to rock, to wait. He kept his eyes on Edrehasivar’s rapt face, his dark eyes and lush mouth, until his buttocks rested upon the emperor’s clean-shaven groin.

He could feel Edrehasivar trembling beneath him, once again wrestling with the urge to thrust. Thara rolled his hips slowly, experimentally, squeezing the shaft within him, trying to make it brush against the nexus of nerves buried deep within him. The darkened eyes fluttered shut; the parted lips emitted another whimper. Growing bolder, Thara jerked his hips harder, leaned forward, and drew his fingertips lightly up the emperor’s torso until they surrounded his nipples. “Thara,” Edrehasivar said helplessly, and Thara could feel yet more wetness beading upon and dripping from the head of his cock at the mere sound of his given name upon the emperor’s lips.

“Let me,” he said again, hoarse and barely audible, as he began to ride his emperor in earnest. “Let me,” he echoed, pulling and tweaking Edrehasivar’s nipples, lightly scraping his thumbnails over their crowns. Edrehasivar trembled with the effort to lie quiescent beneath him but his hips jerked in counterpoint with the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His lips were parted, loose black curls were sticking to his damp grey skin, and an indigo flush rode the high bones of his cheeks. _Thou art so beautiful,_ Thara thought but dared not say, not even now. His stones were beginning to draw upward already, the heat that had pooled in his belly sinking through his loins, even into his upper thighs.

He spent like a fountain, throwing back his head and baring his teeth as his seed splattered onto Edrehasivar’s shaking chest. He felt long fingernails gouge his hips as Edrehasivar pulled Thara tight against his groin, and then he felt the same throb and quiver deep inside his arse that he had felt in his throat. Edrehasivar closed his eyes and clenched his teeth as he spent, too, and Thara could feel the stickiness seeping out of him as he leaned forward a final time to lick the emperor’s chest clean of the seed he had left upon it. As he did so he kept his eyes locked upon Edrehasivar’s, and the emperor made a strangled noise in his throat at the sight and sensation of Thara’s tongue upon his skin.

“I … I am still hard,” Edrehasivar said finally, faintly, despairingly.

So was Thara, and now agonizingly so. It were as if he himself had not just spent twice, and powerfully the second time; even in adolescence this would have rendered him limp, if only for a short while. But his cock was flat to his belly once again, swollen anew and desperate in its need. And Edrehasivar’s third cockstand was distending him, sending nigh-unbearable sensations through the core of his shaft that made him whine behind gritted teeth.

“Thara… wilt…” the emperor began in hesitation. Thara stared at him, half-blind and half-mad, and he was sure now he was seeing a flush of shame, not lust, tinting the slate-colored cheeks and ears. “Wilt … cover me?”

Thara’s mouth dropped open. His mind raced between mortal terror and crazed desire. When he finally could form words, he whispered, “Art sure? I do not wish to — to hurt thee.”

“I did not hurt thee,” Edrehasivar said, far more sensibly than he’d any right to sound. “Did I?”

“No, but …” He didn’t try to finish the sentence; explaining the rudiments of marneise lovemaking to his emperor was well beyond him at the moment. Clumsily, he pulled himself off Edrehasivar’s cock to kneel beside him. “Please, Serenity —”

“Maia.” For all the tentativeness, all the shame and shyness and desperation he had evinced to this point, he uttered his given name as a command.

Thara licked his lips. “Maia. Please, _please,_ tell me if I hurt thee, for I greatly fear to do so. Tell me to stop, and I will ease thy need another way.”

Edrehasivar — Maia, merciful goddesses, _Maia_ — nodded, then asked, “How wishest me to lie?”

“Art fine where thou art for now,” Thara said breathlessly. “But … perhaps with thy legs a bit further apart?” Maia obeyed. Thara, heart pounding, raised two fingers to his mouth. The taste of the emperor’s seed had made him salivate enough, he thought, to coat both of them and, soon, his palm as well.

Maia watched in fascination as Thara’s fingers emerged from his mouth wet and gleaming. “What dost thou?” he asked.

In reply, Thara reached down between Maia’s thighs, behind his stones. Maia gasped and shuddered as he felt Thara’s fingertips skim his hole.

“Do not tense, Ser— Maia,” Thara said softly. “If dost, it will hurt.” Maia nodded and swallowed visibly. He looked terrified, but his cock remained resurgent.

Thara placed his free hand on Maia’s belly, rubbing the skin in slow, soothing circles. When Maia seemed to have relaxed into the touch, Thara began to stroke his hole lightly, round and round, back and forth. Maia made a soft murmur of … appreciation? Acquiescence? Thara took the sound as permission to slip one fingertip into him, watching his face carefully to see if it would tighten in pain, and when it did not he began to push the finger in further.

His emperor’s body was tight and sleek and, oh, so hot around his finger. Thara eased it in until it was completely enclosed, then drew it out again slowly. “Art all right?” he whispered.

“Y-yes,” he heard the gulped reply.

He watched, fascinated, as Maia’s body took his finger again, and again, and again. Before the next thrust, he aligned a second fingertip against Maia’s hole, then said, “I am adding another finger. Again, tell me if it hurts thee.”

This time he did see the tensing of muscles in Maia’s jaw that spoke of discomfort, if not pain. “Maia, please bid me stop if thou must,” Thara said anxiously, stopping with only both fingertips inside Maia.

“No — I am fine. Please, Thara,” Maia begged. _Do not abandon me to this,_ said his widened, darkened eyes.

Thara nodded and continued to work both fingers into Maia. He quested, and found, the spot he knew would afford Maia great pleasure, and he was rewarded with a wild buck of Maia’s hips and a strangled groan. He eased his fingers out again, then back in, pressing and stroking where he had before, drinking in the sight of Maia’s heaving chest and fluttering belly and arching hips and shaking thighs. He fought the urge to lie on the carpet and thrust his own cock against its softness as he fucked his emperor with his fingers.

“I … I think thou art ready for me,” he eventually said, his voice choked with lust. He could not tell how long it had been; time had dissolved for him again. “I think … I think it would be least uncomfortable for thee if didst shed thy robe and seat thyself in my lap, then ease thyself down upon me, as I did upon thee.”

Maia sat up. “Where…”

“…The stone shelf, again,” Thara said brokenly.

It was deliciously cool against the hot, hot skin of Thara’s back, but Ulis’s gaze burnt into the back of his skull. The god had tested him and, once more, found him sorely wanting. But his shame could no more douse his lust than a man could put out a forest fire by spitting. He drew his legs as far apart as he could, his cock on shameless display, and with equal shamelessness he licked his palm slowly and thoroughly.

Kneeling before him, Maia watched raptly as he did so, then watched him slide his wetted palm over his cock. When Thara’s hand fell away, Maia shuffled forward on his knees until he was within the embrasure of Thara’s thighs. The difference in their heights and his inexperience made it awkward for him to position himself. Thara cleared his throat, then croaked, “Wouldst hold thyself open, Maia? With the tips of thy fingers?”

Maia nodded and, gripping the top of the stone with one hand for support, slipped the other hand beneath himself. Thara, his cock in one hand, guided Maia downward and against the head of it with the other.

“Again, do not tense,” Thara whispered. “Go slowly. And … as sinkest, push somewhat with thine inner muscles, as if to expel me. It will open thee up further.” Maia frowned in puzzlement but nodded again.

Thara would never be able to reckon how long it took Maia to fully encompass him. It could have been a few minutes; it could have been a thousand years. His entire world narrowed down to the feel of Maia Drazhar, Edrehasivar VII, Emperor of the united Ethuveraz, grandson to the Great Avar of Barizhan, naked and glistening and trembling and his cock painfully rigid as he lowered himself inch by inch down upon Thara’s own aching shaft.

When Thara was completely inside him, Maia shut his eyes tightly and whimpered. “So full,” he gasped.

Thara throbbed within the delicious vise of Maia’s body. In sooth he was not that large, but Maia had never taken a cock before, and to watch his expression waver between the alarming discomfort and the exquisite pleasure of being stretched wide open beyond what he perceived he could bear — as Thara had been so many times before — was enthralling.

Then Maia’s eyes opened again and his gaze flew upward, and his expression turned to one of shame and despair.

“Ulis…” he whispered.

Thara’s heart clenched. “I know.” He reached up to stroke Maia’s face, forehead to cheek to chin.

“I have desecrated a holy space,” Maia said with a thickness in his voice that was not lust. The darkened eyes began to glisten.

“Shhh.” Thara brushed away the pearling tears with his thumb. He wanted to tell Maia that it would be all right, but he could not utter even such a banal lie.

“And I have taken gross advantage of thee,” Maia added huskily.

Thara sat up straighter against the stone, his eyes flying wide. “No — Maia, _no._ Art so much younger than I. Hast never done aught of this nature before. Art not even marnis, merely affected by the herb. And I am sanctified. If anything, I take advantage of _thee.”_

Maia shook his curls resolutely. “And I am far more powerful than thee, and thou didst save my throne and, in sooth, my life — and it was I who began … all of this.” Despite his stricken mien and the tears leaving shining tracks upon his cheeks, his cock remained rigid, Thara noticed. As did Thara’s within Maia.

“There is no help for it now,” Thara murmured, stroking Maia’s throat, then his nipples again. “We can only spend ourselves, until the herb is done with us.”

Maia sobbed as he rocked himself back and forth on Thara’s cock, just as Thara had moved upon his. Thara held tightly to Maia’s hip with one hand as his other tweaked his emperor’s nipples, then slid down to wrap around his cock and stroke him root to tip. Maia made a noise that was half-moan, half-wail, and his rocking grew ever wilder — until his body seized rigidly and began to tremble, clenching Thara unbearably tightly within it. Thara stared up into his ecstatic face, as if it were the icon of a god of love, and watched the very last shreds of his dignity desert him as his seed spilled hot and copious for the third time over Thara’s hand.

With a guttural noise Maia collapsed forward, half onto the stone and half onto Thara. Thara, his crisis rising violently within him, grabbed both Maia’s hips and fucked into him, his arse nearly clearing the floor with each thrust. Maia, utterly limp, made no resistance. Within a dozen thrusts Thara exploded inside him, pressing his mouth against Maia’s chest to stifle his cry. The climax wrung him out, took everything he had left to give — seed and strength and wit and senses — and in its wake he slumped against the stone, panting in, at long last, blessed relief.

***

He did not, he thought much later, actually lose consciousness. But his senses were beclouded for a long while, fifteen minutes or more.

He opened his eyes onto a mostly darkened chamber. It took him a moment to remember where he was, who the man in his lap breathing against his neck was, why they were naked, and why their bodies were damp and sticky. As memory returned, the shame bit into him like the lead-tipped tails of a scourge. That he had expected it did not ease its agony.

“Serenity?” he whispered, his throat contracting.

He felt Maia — no, Edrehasivar again, now — stir, then jerk, then spring out of his lap. “Oh. _Oh,”_ the emperor babbled, grabbing up his fallen robe and wrapping it about his soiled body. His eyes were enormous, but the pupils now shrunken. “Mer Celehar. We — we are so sorry, please forgive us, we did not —”

When Edrehasivar had trailed off in his consternation, Thara shook his head. A hot, stinging moisture was rising in his eyes and nose. “Please do not apologize, Serenity. And we would suggest we both cleanse ourselves before we redon our robes.”

“Oh. Yes,” the emperor said befuddledly as Thara rose and, shivering with the chill of the stone under his bare feet, moved to the end of the stone shelf where the washing implements were.

Thara filled the bowl, handed it and the towel to Edrehasivar, and turned his back. He heard the plash of water and the soft friction of linen against skin. Then, a few moments later, a quiet, “Mer Celehar, if you would like…”

“Yes, please, Serenity.”

He performed his ablutions with his own back turned. When they were done, he reshod himself. Then, his eyes still averted from the emperor, he slowly gathered up his robe and belted it around him. He supposed he should have made haste with it, as Edrehasivar had, as a sop to modesty. But at this point he doubted it made any difference to either his emperor or his god.

The few traces of seed they had left on one of the carpets were, to Thara’s vast relief, easily dabbed away. He left the wet, soiled towel in a crumpled heap on the floor, in the narrow space between the stone shelf and the wall. Though he cringed at the thought that another cleric would have to pick it up, he saw no other way to dispose of it that would not have further eroded his, or Edrehasivar’s, dignity.

He forced his ears and his chin up, and himself to hold the emperor’s pained gaze. With more firmness than he felt, he said, “We suggest, Serenity, that neither of us hint to your First Nohecharei of matters going awry. The smell of the burnt herb will override any other odors. If they ask why you seem distressed, you may explain that the herb unearthed your deepest fears, which meditation alone sometimes looses. Whatever they suspect, they are bound by oath and by their loyalty to you to say naught of it, except perhaps to one another in private.”

Edrehasivar nodded. Though he looked positively woebegone, he too had set his ears and jaw. Thara remembered how very much this man had survived. No doubt he was reminding himself of it all as well.

Thara set the cover back upon the brazier to smother the last of the embers. He took the candle from the sconce; it had burnt down more than halfway. Then, not looking at one another, not speaking to one another, he and Edrehasivar moved to the great door that hid their shame from the world.

***

“Cala Athmaza, Lieutenant Beshelar, would you please step outside that we might have a private conversation with Mer Celehar?” The emperor’s tone was polite, but it brooked no argument. Beshelar looked disapproving but did not speak as he and his counterpart stepped outside the Tortoise Room and closed the door behind them.

Thara’s hands, folded before him, trembled. He and Edrehasivar had exchanged relatively few words in parting, only enough to not arouse suspicions. Since then, three weeks before, their sole communications had been a brief letter from Thara to the emperor indicating he had “solved a mystery” related to their meditation session — he was certain that the imperial secretary, at the very least, would read the letter before His Serenity did — and, in reply, a terse summons of Thara to the Untheileneise Court.

“You say you have solved the mystery that … beset us, Mer Celehar.” The emperor looked no less nervous than Thara did. He seemed to have lost weight since they had last met, and it did not become him. Thara supposed that nervous was better than icily polite, and that at least Edrehasivar did not look sickly with his shame.

“We did, Serenity. Later the same day, we spoke with the curate who gave us the sachet of herbs. Without providing unnecessary details, we told him it had produced undesirable effects in us both, such as sweating and agitation. He became visibly concerned and told us he would look into the matter. A few days later, when we next returned to the othasmeire, he profusely begged our forgiveness — and yours.”

The emperor stared at him. “What was in those sachets, then?”

“As he explained it to us, Serenity, it was an herb called ‘Orshan’s Kiss.’”

“After the goddess of crops?”

“Yes, Serenity. And therefore, though it is not a commonly venerated aspect of Orshan, of fertility. And thus … er, libido.”

With the late-morning sun streaming into the Tortoise Room, Thara could definitely perceive a darkening in the emperor’s cheeks and ears. His own had started to feel quite warm. He continued, “We should add that it is never burnt for such purposes, Serenity. A physician might make a weak tincture of Orshan’s Kiss for a patient experiencing difficulties in, er, marital relations. But its primary use is in fodder for livestock that will not ... mate.”

Edrehasivar’s color went from indigo to ashen. “Why on earth would this herb be in the sachets instead of Cstheio’s Breath?”

“Because it had been picked and dried by a very young and unschooled novice, Serenity. We are told the two flowers resemble one another in color and in the shapes of their leaves and petals. An experienced gatherer can tell the living plants apart, but once the blossoms have been dried it is impossible to do so … unless one burns them and inhales the smoke. Which the curate did with several other sachets, in the privacy of his own quarters, until … er… to the point he was certain it was Orshan’s Kiss he had dispensed to us.”

The emperor let out a deep breath. “So… an innocent mistake, then.”

“So it seems, Serenity,” Thara said.

There was an awkward pause, and then Edrehasivar said, “That poor novice. We would hate to be in their shoes.”

Thara could not help but smile. “We are sure they have been sternly spoken to, Serenity. But likely no more than that. Their superiors would recognize it as an understandable mistake, and it is not their way to punish novices harshly for most infractions.”

Edrehasivar looked relieved. “We are glad to hear this. When you next visit the othasmeire, Mer Celehar, please let the curate know we bear no ill will against him, the novice, or their fellow clerics for this incident.”

“We will, Serenity,” Thara said, concealing his own relief. “And, if we may, we would add that we do not think Ulis will bear any ill will against you for .. what happened. Or, we pray and hope, against us.”

He had in fact had spent long, long hours in such prayer, nearly every moment he had not been Witnessing, since he had last parted from Edrehasivar. The cleric’s frantic apologies had helped persuade him that Ulis would, in fact, forgive him. One day.

“We are much reassured by that, Mer Celehar. That said, an you will forgive us…” The emperor’s mouth flattened. “We believe it will be beneficial to the friendship that has been forged between us to … permit some distance between the two of us for the near future.”

Thara’s heart sank a little. But he understood the wisdom of the emperor’s decision, and it was a far better concluding note than his own imagination had harrowed him with in the wake of the summons. He sank to his knees, prostrated himself fully for ten seconds, and rose again. Edrehasivar was regarding him with haunted eyes. Thara dropped his gaze, then said, “Serenity, we are as always your servant. We await your —” he stopped himself just in time from saying _pleasure_ and said, instead, “word.”

Edrehasivar merely nodded, then turned his head away. It was the gentlest possible dismissal, but dismissal it was nonetheless. Thara turned and left the Tortoise Room without further word to either emperor or nohecharei, only the wistful thought, _Until then, I will content myself with seeing thee in my dreams._


End file.
